Son Of A Shogun: Shogun 2: Total War?

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There’s a couple of leaks which seem to point towards it. Firstly, as reported by Kotaku, a Sega PR booked a trade show appointment with Turkish site Oyungezer for Shogun 2. Secondly, a press-release for it appeared on TWCenter, apparently leaked. The thread’s been removed though still shows up on google, but has been mirrored all over the place. We’ll only know at E3 – or with PC Gamer’s next cover, whichever comes first. The leaked alleged press-release is below, plus some initial thoughts…

And, to stress, there’s no proof that this press-release is genuine. Take everything below with a pinch of the proverbial.

Title: Shogun 2: Total War™
Published by SEGA. Developed by The Creative Assembly.
Format: PC- DVD
1 to 8 players
Ratings: ESRB Teen, PEGI 16, OFLC M, USK 12 – All provisional
Release date: 2011
MASTER THE ART OF WAR TO BECOME THE UNDISPUTED RULER OF MEDIEVAL JAPAN
In 2000, the Creative Assembly re-invented the strategy genre with Shogun: Total War, an unprecedented blend of 3D real-time battles and turn-based management game and the first offering in the multi-award winning series. With over 7 million units sold and universal acclaim from the press and community, Total War has consistently been at the cutting edge of the genre and is today one of the most successful PC franchises of all time.
In 2011, the makers of Rome and Empire: Total War will release the sequel to the game that started it all. Shogun 2: Total War will take long-time veterans and newcomers alike to the next level of strategy gaming on PC. Based on 10 years of experience in making Total War, Shogun 2 is the perfection of the series with a new Artificial Intelligence (AI), revolutionary multiplayer modes, brand new campaign map options and epic 3D real-time battles.
It is the middle of the 16th century in Medieval Japan. The country, once ruled by a unified government, is now split into many warring clans. The player takes on the role of one Daimyo – the clan leader – and will use military engagements, economics and diplomacy to achieve the ultimate goal: re-unite Japan under his supreme command and become the new Shogun – the undisputed ruler of Japan.
Set during the golden age of Samurai warfare, Shogun 2 brings to life the most turbulent period of Japanese history.
Total War redefined
Shogun 2 is the ultimate refinement of the original formula with a new, cutting-edge AI, more polish and online functionality than ever before. The result is the perfect mix of real-time and turn-based strategy gaming that invites both veterans of Total War and new players to experience the enjoyment and depth of the series.
New character progression
Choose from 9 different clans and compete on and offline for the undisputed supremacy of Medieval Japan. Gain experience to level up your own character-warlord as well as your generals and agents.
A complete single and multiplayer offering
Play through the Main Campaign in single player or invite a friend online to play competitively or cooperatively in Campaign Multiplayer mode. Join 8-player multiplayer battles with your own upgradable avatar and climb the online Leaderboard to show the world who reigns supreme. Also including exciting new modes of team play for clans, a first in the Total War series.
New Generation AI system
Developed according to Sun Tzu’s principles in the Art of War, the Artificial Intelligence constantly analyses its situation and reacts to your every move with greater precision and variety.
Improved land and naval battle gameplay
Land battles never felt so realistic with new multi-staged castle sieges and terrain features changing according to the weather and time of the day – turning each engagement into a tactical challenge. Set buildings on fire to force garrisoned troops out and use your units’ special abilities to turn the tide of the battle.
Naval combat also offers more variety with the addition of coastal battles. Islands can work as effective cover for your ships, while sand bars and reefs can be used as traps against an enemy fleet.
Accessible and in-depth empire-building gameplay
A streamlined User Interface makes management of your kingdom much easier. Build and govern cities, recruit and train troops, conduct diplomacy and manage your agents – each feature is now introduced with comprehensive tutorials, gradually revealing the depth of the Shogun 2 campaign map – the heart and soul of the Total War experience.

Initial thoughts? It strikes me as a smart move for Creative Assembly, on at least a couple of levels.

Firstly, with their last games, they’ve managed to burn huge chunks of the respect gamers ever had for them. As evidenced by all of RPS’ recent comment threads, there are grudges a plenty. Going back to their roots is, at least, a gesture of trying to start again.

Secondly – and more importantly – arguably the biggest problem of the recent Total War games has been their scale. They are not elegant designs, but maximialist pile-everything-on ones. Part of the joy is just the impression that it all hangs to together. However, when the AI isn’t up to it, it all falls apart. In that press release the “New Generation AI system” is going to get a lot of gags translating it as “An AI System”.

Shogun, while a big game, is much more manageable than anything Creative Assembly have attempted in a Total-War-game proper in a decade. By strimming it back from the epic sprawl they can concentrate their attention. Clearly, we’re going to lose a lot here. Hopefully, they’ll gain by making it work.

And there’s a third thing – the period really is relatively unexplored grounds. The first Shogun game was an enormous atmospheric period piece – I can’t think of a mainstream game which treated the period in a grounded respectful way, with nary a whiff of fantasy. To turn somewhat tautological, I’d like another Shogun game, if only because I’d like another game like Shogun.

All the people who were looking forward to the US Civil War or something based in the 20th Century are going to be disappointed if this turns out (as it likely will) to be true. It would be a wise move though as you say Kieron to narrow the focus down a bit and make sure the AI is brought back up to scratch.

While there is something to be said for the cram as much of the globe into the game attitude the CA seem to have had for Empire, it clearly didn’t work out in the eyes of many fans of the series. I wasn’t too keen on the original Shogun myself, I found it the map too small for my tastes, I always felt crammed in it. The original Medieval had the scale right though I think.

An article on Shogun with no mention of Romance of the Three Kingdoms? Shame on you!
At least give a mention to Romance of the Three Kingdoms 11 which was the last PC release and none of you people even played it.

Had it not been for Empire and Napoleon, this would be fantastic news.
Pity its being developed by CA.
I dont see it as much as a gesture to start over again, as much as reusing a franchise that they did promote, but didnt create in the first place (It was a board game, after all)

With brilliant reviews and howling fans, i would still not buy it.
Give it to a new studio.

The first made for great fun in great campaigns, until a certain point where the game turned into a bizarre arms race for Geisha assassins, who had a huge success rate and no effective counter-measure. I always pictured early-industrial factories blackening the skies with smoke as they pumped out mountainous stockpiles of killer hair needles and umbrellas.

For some reason.

Also, in the history of gaming, there has been no more greatly disappointing berserker unit than the No-Dachi (also known as the ‘fucking No-Dachi’). A poor man’s Warrior Monk indeed.

I don’t think they’re ever likely to make one based on the American Civil War, but I heard in one of their interviews (think it was in pcg) that a lot of the team members were really wanting to do something based on WW1. That’d be really interest, I think, if hard to get right – drawing up trench lines on the battle map, rolling your tanks over the enemy bunkers, etc…

I think, though, that TW based on ancient civilisations would be really interesting, if they were to do it pre-gunpowder. Could look at the mesopotamian empires, the assyrians, thracians, that kind of stuff. Or even (if only) some sort of mythological ancient world TW, with hydra and dragons and ohcrapthatwouldbecool.

It would be pretty much the entirety of the Western Front between Christmas 1914 and January 1918. The Eastern Front was far more mobile and interesting (especially as Germany won, more or less, which gave Hitler some bad ideas for WW2).

The problem is that if you don’t have hundreds of thousands of troops sitting in trenches shooting at one another, you don’t really have Western Front WWI. If you replicate that, you end up with a rather boring game.

At least with WWI, if you’re playing as Germany and the British AI is acting completely retarded, CA can go, “WTF are you talking about? That’s authentic Field Marshal Haig AI at work there!”

Bit of an exaggeration there. More like 1914 to mid-1917. Through 1917-1918 the British had got pretty good at combined arms offensives. Their tactics were much like Blitzkrieg, which the German’s obviously adopted and improved, while the British managed to forget it.

Empire isn’t so different before you have any research done. You line up opposite each other and get shot at until somebody runs away. As you get further into the game, more options become available.

There’s plenty enough tactical and campaign variety throughout WW1 to carry a Total War style game. The attacks became increasingly sophisticated – I think they’d be pretty satisfying to put together and pull off.

Again, I think a handful of smaller, more focused campaigns would make more sense in this case. As long as they adapt the game to fit the war, rather than try and cram the war into the existing TW formula, I could see it working pretty well.

Thanks for those links! What was ingenious about the failure clips was that they all started in the same way as the successes, so you never had any idea of the outcome. Really interesting direction too – it would be nice to see CA try something with more cutscene potential.

I found the first Shogun rather dull to be honest. Although I don’t know how much of that was to do with the lacklustre RTS battles or the horrible Risk like strategy map. It did have atmosphere in abundance though, particularly for a Western game.

I want to be excited about this, but i have no faith in CA. I would not put it past them to competely bugger this up, and kill the memory of the original in doing so.

I’m with Kieron on the this being a sensible step though, if CA want to appeal to the fans of their games, they need to revist what made these people fans of their games.

Revisiting Rome was also rumoured (guessed) to be in the offing, I think it would be an astute choice for CA to go back further than that in their IP. Shogun’s scope is narrower, but it’s been in the detail (or bread and butter) that the last few TW games have failed.

I’m guessing we will see the silly “1 man unit” Kensais reinforced with dlc Buddhist Warrior monks with 12 foot Katanas of death (only for £3.99).

It’s certainly written douchely enough to be legit. The bit about Sun Tzu for instance.

This seems like an odd choice to me. There seem to be many more people asking for Rome 2 than Shogun 2, in my experience. Rome lends itself more to the direction the series has gone in too. Assuming this is legit, then I suspect they will strip this game right back to the simplicity of Shogun 1 in an attempt to attract new players and ‘start over’. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there might not be much there for those of us who have stuck with the series right the way through.

I do agree that a smaller scale works a lot better for these games. The trick is to manage that whilst still having variety. Kingdoms was the pinnacle of the series for me, but it’s hard to see how they can do something like that with a Shogun 2. Shogun was great at the time, but I bet it feels very limited (in scope, depth, tactics, everything) if you play it today.

I agree that the scaling down might do wonders for the TW franchise, especially if they are concentrating on the AI (as they say they are). I don’t actually think the AI has improved since the original Shogun anyway, so that’s some sort of ironic, symmatery, book-end thing.

I’m assuming they’ll bring the campaing map up to their modern standards as well, which will also be a good thing IMO. The use and abuse of the Japanese terrain was Shogun’s strongest point IMO (and for those who remember it: fucking bridge battles *shudder*).

I’m actually also glad they’re doing this and not Rome. Rome is still very good (when modded anyway), and I after Empire I’d fully expect it to be a complete clusterfuck. Get the AI right, then move onto a good Rome remake.

All in all, good news. But with this strong addendum for CA: Don’t. Fuck. It. Up.

You’re forgetting about one thing – one of the reasons many people were pissed off at CA was STEAM implementation.
Keep Steamworks away from Total War! Get in touch with Stardock and use Impulse Reactor, CA!

I thought the one thing everyone was pissed off about was that the silly amount of DLC Creative Assembly released. Or the sheer bugginess of the game.

That all said, I wouldn’t be too surprised if Sega enforced the Alpha Protocol DRM on them (i.e. 5 or so activations, with web-based revoking tool, to be removed in 18-24 months). It would force CA to pull their socks up in terms of extra content and expansion packs.

Yeah, DLC and some Steam-related problems like Empire stuck updating or downloading tons of stuff etc. really got on my nerves and checking other forums, lots of people were mad, too.

I’d actually be grateful if SEGA forced CA to use DRM similar to that of Alpha Protocol. One-time activation I would be very happy with instead of dealing with Steam again.
With that said, Impulse Reactor sounds really promising with its “no third party client, no digital distribution exclusivity” idea, so CA should really get in touch with Stardock.

I’ve never had any problems with E:TW on Steam. Not releasing it on Steam would be, well, a rather stupid idea. E:TW and N:TW both sold well on Steam, and just because they’re sold on one digital distribution platform doesn’t mean they can’t be sold on others.

It had nothing to do with Steam. Empire was shipped resoundingly broken.There was a constant drip feed of units dlc over proper modding support (being resolved though now, apparently), and the promised multi-player campaign while there ended up being a beta for Napoleon- not what we were promised at all.

Frequent Steam critic though I am, I have to say that Steamworks is really the least of Empire’s problems. It was completely broken, contained braindead AI, lacked the promised MP mode, and worst of all was actively hostile to modding in a way no TW game had been before (so none of those other problems could be easily fixed by third parties).

Steamworks did have one particularly negative effect, though: it meant I couldn’t sell my copy and recover any of the $50 I wasted on the stupid thing.

@Barman1942
Who said anything about NOT selling Shogun 2 on Steam? That’s the point – if you add Steamworks, you force those who buy a boxed version to become Steam users and your game is exclusive to Steam. I don’t want that, why should anyone want that?
If you use any other solution, those who buy a boxed version don’t have to install a third party app and EVERY digital distribution channel can carry the game. According to Stardock, Impulse Reactor doesn’t bundle any client, so it gets rid of THE reason why Steamworks is problematic. That’s the way to go.

As for Empire’s problems – it had its own, but Steam added yet another layer.

YES. THREE KINGDOMS/SANGUO. The inevitable expansion pack can be for the earlier Warring States period; be the first to found the empire on the ruins of the Zhou. Be or beat the Qin.

And, seriously, since when has CA not made up totally ridiculous and ahistorical units to add variety? I considered Rome unplayable and offensive (Old Kingdom Egyptians? In 300 BC? Really?) until the RTR mods.

I absolutely loved Shogun and still have fond memories of it. I’ll be watching this with great interest if it turns out to be correct. I was one of those PC gamers who were quite annoyed with Empire and I skipped Napoleon entirely, but this could certainly renew my old love for CA.

If you were quite annoyed with Empire then you should try Napoleon. It fixes many things that Empire didn’t do well, only it doesn’t have as much depth in the Grand Campaign. Battles, though, are so much better.

It seems like a China TW would be much better for what they’re going for. For one, I don’t think naval combat was so popular a pastime for the Japanese. Then, there’s also having a new theater for a change, as opposed to same old. And, well, if they’re gonna talk about Sun Tzu…

Not a fan of the setting, I was so hoping for some sort of fantasy version of TW, with big units and stuff. Much like Kings and Castles or whatever it will be called – but without the incredible dumbing down to fit on a console-toy.

I hope they retain the flavour and sense of place that Shogun had and all the later games lacked. The throne room with its snivelling portugese supplicants and the brash self-confident dutch were awesome and the FMVs for campaign actions blow everything away, including the half hearted M2 attempts (even if they were by the same guy).

They badly need to focus on their battle engines functionality instead of just the pretties. Pathing around any obstacle nerfs a major part of tactics and the inability to deploy on broken terrain, near mountains or houses and even on the edge of cliffs without the formation looking like an earthquake hit removes a fair chunk of the tactics from the gameplay and leads to very samey battles. A return to largely melee based combat will help out the Ai though. A lot of the problem in Empire was its inability to deal with ranged combat and the way CA dealt with it: psychic knowledge of clicks and ranges or didn’t deal with it: blobbing into a nice big artillery and musket target lead to the dissatisfaction.

I hope they finally cave on the mod tools soon. It’ll return a lot of good will to them in the run up to Shogun from a lot of very jaded gamers.

I so hope this is more than just a rumour. Shōgun was my first encounter with the Total War series and it was a helluva introduction. Two of my cousins and I formed a triumvirate over a long holiday and took our clan to great glory. Good times.

The problem with CA is that though I have enjoyed every single one of their games, the AI in M2, Empire, and Napoleon hasn’t even resembled challenging, and Rome wasn’t particularly tough either, even on VH/VH mode. They keep promising to fix it however, and never manage it. So now I just simply don’t believe them when they say it’ll be done. It takes a lot to make me not naively believe someone when they say things, so that’s an achievement.

For some reason, I find Shogun and Medieval much harder than any of the successors, mainly because I have distinct memories of finding that in those 2 games, the faction on the other side of the map would essentially grow in opposition to you, meaning you’d often meet somewhere in the middle for a BIG FIGHT.

I’m also a little disappointed because I wasn’t really especially interested in another exploration of feudal Japan, but maybe this will surprise me.

In my view, Shogun was significantly harder because there were much less troop varieties, meaning that the AI could easily handle what you threw at it, and could throw stuff back in return. Having only 2 archer units (of which only 1 was a skirmishing unit) certainly helped, as did a very basic Rock-Paper-Scissors feel to the game. They don’t actually need to drastically improve the AI, unless they plan on adding a ton of rubbish units that only serve to muddy the waters.

Additionally, the terrain in Shogun was much more brutal for chokepoints and ambushes. It’s still the only TW game where the AI successfully walked me into an ambush, and then proceeded to slaughter me (argh where did those warrior monks come from!?! FFFFUUUUUU-). Later versions, while they were lovely and realistic, lacked the steep gradients of the Rice terraces that made them much more interesting.

I’ve always said the AI problems in TW games are down to CA adding in too many complicated features the AI can’t use. If they are truly dialing it back in Shogun (they made progress toward that in Napolean) I may actually buy one of their games again.

Anonymous Coward said:
All the people who were looking forward to the US Civil War or something based in the 20th Century are going to be disappointed if this turns out (as it likely will) to be true. I

Bleh..nobody but americans want to play Civil War and US pcgamers hardly buy enough pc games for CA to develop the whole game for them. Realisticaly the most one could have expected is Civil War add-on to Napoleon or Empire, but I’m afraid that brand new game was out of the question.

Anyway…Shogun 2…yey. I longed for sequel for so many years. And it’s a great choice. Following CA’s history it’s pretty obvious the game will be based on heavily modified Empire:TW engine and I think they want to wait for new tech before they attempt to make a follow-up to Rome

A rather sweeping generalisation. Anyone interested in wargaming who hasn’t studied the careers of Lee, Jackson, Stuart, Grant et al has a huge gap in their knowledge. And the US Civil War was a particularly interesting one, with early battles fought on a scale and a style that Napoleon would be fairly familiar with after adjusting his expectations of the lethal range of the standard infantry weapon then phasing into attrition battles akin to WW1. And strategically very different with railways allowing fast troop movements, deep cavalry raids possible due to changes in weapons. It pretty much had it all, ironclads, primitive submarines, naval invasions, guerilla warfare, observation balloons etc. Of course the chance of CA being able to produce a game that could do justice to such scope is precisely zero so I’m rather glad they’re not doing it. But I hope someone will one day.

An American Civil War Total War would have been an astute move a few years ago when the US PC market was stronger or maybe as an expansion to EMPIRE. Doing it now would be less assured of success.

Having said that, I’d have supported such a game if it focused on the eastern USA and didn’t have Europe in it. The European battle map has gotten seriously boring over the past nine years and umpteen games set on it.

I’m happy that we’re not getting Rome 2 (there’s R:TR and Europa Barbarorum, we don’t need a new Rome game) and that it’s not another gunpowder-era game (because swords and shields are a lot more fun). However, after Empire and Napoleon, I don’t think it’ll be worth picking this up for a while – the AI’s probably going to be nonfuctional again and with their DLC strategy locking megamods out, we’re not going to have a Rome: Total Realism or a Stainless Steel to make the game playable in 4-5 years.

Yeah. Assuming the game is the same kind of modlocked, broken, braindead-AI saddled mess that CA has been releasing lately I don’t think the setting or the name can save it. I’d love nothing more than the see a proper sequel to Shogun, I just don’t think there’s any chance that CA/Sega will choose to make such a thing given their recent behavior.

Yeeeeeeesssss! Shogun wast he first Total War game I bought and played to death. I LOVE feudal Japan as a setting for games like this. I can’t wait to see the new graphics and zoom in close on the hot Samurai on Samurai action. If they don’t put blood in this one… twoud be a damned shame.

“Following CA’s history it’s pretty obvious the game will be based on heavily modified Empire:TW engine and I think they want to wait for new tech before they attempt to make a follow-up to Rome”

That’s the part that’s going to make many (former) CA fans like me skeptical. Their history implies it won’t be a ground-up rewrite of the game engine, which isn’t good news for AI improvements. It smells a little bit like a quick fix, to reduce the things the current AI can’t handle well in Empire like diplomacy and economics on the huge world map, and ranged combat in the tactical battles. Scale the Empire engine back to a smaller geographic setting and reduce the importance of gunpowder, and even the current AI would perform a little better.

I hope I’m wrong about that, and it’s more of a ground-up redesign. I do think it’s good to get back to melee and ancient warfare roots, although Shogun 2 doesn’t strike me as a great use for the new naval combat engine. I was hoping more for Trireme battles in Ancient Greece or something.

I think the reason of a lot of people’s disappointment lies in the fact that the games were all pretty and had a lot going for them. To find out it plays like shite just feels like wasted potential. Waiting for the reviews on this one and then taking those with a pinch of salt the size of Mount Fuji.

Man, I was just talking about Shōgun to a friend of mine earlier. What a coincidence! It’s probably the Total War game I like second best (next to Medieval II), and the setting was really unique for its time.

I do hope they keep the option to turn all of the spoken dialog into Japanese. Hell, hire an expert to make all the written Japanese into hentaigana and all the spoken dialog into period appropriate Sengokujidai Japanese. It would do wonders for my Japanese learning. Gotta practice those “sessha”‘s and “de gozaru”‘s.

I hope they release a finished game first time around. Rather than half a game then a full priced expansion pack a few months later that is the other half.

I have pretty much lost faith in CA tbh. Their next game will have to be very special for me to buy it, this is coming from someone who has been a fan of their games since they first hit the scene. I feel very jilted by Empire and sega rushing to release shoddy games. I feel TW has gone the way of the franchise, hoping to sell copies based on the name not quality.

People who call Napoleon: Total War a full-price expansion are being remarkably stingy about it considering it’s more different from Empire than Medieval 2 was from Rome, or Medieval 1 was from Shogun.

The complaints about mod tools are perfectly valid but NTW is easily the most polished Total War game yet and all these claims of it being rushed and light on content just come across as completely divorced from reality.

N:TW is fine, Empire was not. N:TW is what Empire should have been. I feel let down becasue they should have just waited on releasing Empire instead of rushing out a buggy and frankly shitty game.

There is few things I hate more than buying a game at release for the full price then being penalised by constant crashes, bugs and half finished features. When it’s better to not buy a game on release and wait for the game to be finished and be in the bargain bin it’s both bad for the business and bad for the customer.

Woo, great news if true! Shogun was truly revolutionary when it came out, I just hope the campaign map will be epic large and the AI a bit less retarded than now.

For those wanting American Civil War, I would expect it could be modded from Empire (if they would only release mod tools…) And Three Kingdoms (or circa) you could play All Under Heaven (M2TW mod) when it’s out: link to twcenter.net

The first time I played Shogun I played it with a friend for 9 hours straight. I spent the rest of that summer vacation obsessed with the game. The later Total War games never captured my imagination quite as well as Shogun. It was, by far, the most atmospheric of the lot (although I haven’t played anything past Rome). I hope they can pull it off again, the attention to detail with the atmosphere, and the simple but deep strategy layer.